News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-08-11
THE COST OF SWELL CLOTHES.
Fifth Avenue Tailor Charges-Tail-
Ors who No Longer Say Pants"
LFrnm the n. Y Snn-l

.
This is the dull time of the year in
the tailor custom trade, and many work
men are out of employment until the
fall trade begins. One of these men,
who is also an officer in the Tailors'
Union, has been spending some of his
leisure i'll thought, and he gave to one
of our reporters some facts about the
Fifth avenue and BOwery tailors.
''PeOple seem to think" he said,
that Fifth avenue tailors make all the
money, and that they charge exorbitant
prices for clothes. How often do you
hear OF Fifth avenue tailor accumulat-
ing fortune? The wealthy tailors are
the men who make cheap clothes and
many of them. The ready-made cloth
ing men become wealthy, and the big
BOwery tailors get rich because they do
large business for cash, and they use
cheap materials. There is more profit
per cent. on $12 suit of clothes than
on $50, and as there are hundred
cheap suits sold to one dear suit, the
man who manufactures the cheap cloth
ing makes the most money.
ga Fifth avenue tailor pays from SO
to $25 for having a coat made, 81. 80 to
So for trousers and almost as much for
a waistcOat. Besides, he has n cutter at
$50 or $75 week, and enormous rent
to pay. His cloth and trimmings cost
him three or four times as much as
those used in Bowery suit, and he has
to make many alterations to suit his
customers that cost forty cents an hour
Against this rate of wages the Bowery
tailor hires cheap labor, and his hands
work in outside tenement houses. He
pays so or rs cents for making trousers,
80 cents for waistcoat and 81 or SO for
a coat. This enables him to make up q
made-to-order suit at $12 at good
profit, and in five $12 suits there is
much more profit than in one $50 suit.
His employees make $S to SO week at
the most, while q fiue educated tailor
on good work can run up to $35 and
$40. They are the artists at the trade.
| have known Fifth avenue tailors to
pay as high as $25 for the making of an
Overcoat, though that is not common.
These best grade tailors have women to
assist them in the sewing, to whom
they pay IS to $12 week.
'The fashion of women having tailor
made clothes has sent the prices of work
up q few per cent. 1t was good thing
for the best tailors, as none but a good
man is fit to make a suit for q lady. 1t
takes more care in the the fit than max
ing clothes for man, and it gives a
good. man. employment when the trade
would be slack otherwise.
"The sweating system hurts the pay.
That is, when sub boss takes the work
and lets it out to be done in tenement
houses. He pays next to nothing, and
his employees have to work fourteen and
sixteen hours day to make Sc or 81
week. This is chiefly i'll the ready-made
clothing line and does not affect the pay
of the best custom tailors. A tailor of
the best class always dresses we'll; it
does not cost him as much as it does an
outsider. He buys his own goods and
trimmings, and by making his own
clothes is able to have for SO or $50 n
suit that would cost $50 to any one else.
''There is one thing the tailors feel
grateful to the Stul for 1t has elevated
thu tailor by improving the terms ap-
Piled to the various articles OF clothing.
Especially is that so in the matter of
trousers. No fine tailor says pants any
more, and the change has come since
the Sun called attention to the inaccu-
rlcy of such expressions as fine tailor
made pantaloons' and gents pants
speciality"